sity  of  California 
;hern  Regional 
irary  Facility 


I         ...  CORTISSOZ 


V       ' 


AVGVSTVS   SAINT.GAVDENS 


"AMOR  CARITAS" 

This  bronze  in  the  Luxembourg  illustrates  an  idea  which 
had  a  peculiar  fascination  for  Saint'Gaudens.  The  same  fig'' 
ure,  but  with  arms  lowered,  was  used  by  him  for  one  of  the 
angels  of  the  Morgan  tomb  at  Hartford.  Practically  identi' 
cal  with  this  bronze  is  the  angel  on  the  tomb  of  Ann  Maria 
Smith  at  Newport,  which  was  carried  out  by  the  sculptor's 
brother,  Louis  Saint'Gaudens. 


AVGVSTVS 
SAINT- GAVDENS 

BY  ROYAL  CORTISSOZ  *  ILLVSTRATED 


HOVGHTON  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK  -  MDCCCCVII 


COPYRIGHT  1907  BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 
PUBLISHED  NOVEMBER  1907 


REPRINTED  APRIL,  1908 


TO   E.  H.C 


SRLF 
ARTS 


1 901 


PREFATORY   NOTE 


THE  chronology  of  the  works  of  Saint'Gaudens  is 
difficult,  and,  in  some  cases,  impossible  to  fix  with  abso^ 
lute  accuracy.  He  was  apt  to  have  several  commissions 
in  process  of  execution  at  the  same  time,  and  in  more 
than  one  instance  he  carried  a  task  over  a  considerable 
period.  For  example,  when  I  asked  him  about  the  Shaw 
monument,  he  replied,  "I  had  this  many  years  in  my 
studio,  my  interest  making  me  do  a  thing  beyond  what 
the  sum  contracted  for  justified  me  in  doing."  In  plac^ 
ing  most  of  the  statues  and  medallions  here  illustrated 
I  have  followed  indications  given  to  me  by  the  sculptor 
himself. 

For  permission  to  make  use  in  this  monograph  of 
material  previously  contributed  by  me  to  "  The  North 
American  Review/'  "  The  Outlook,"  and  "  The  New 
York  Tribune,"  I  am  indebted  to  the  courtesy  of  the 
editors  of  those  publications. 

ROYAL  CORTISSOZ. 

New  York,  November  i,  1 907. 


LIST  OF  ILLVSTRATIONS 

AMOR  CARITAS FRONTISPIECE 

HOMER  SAINT/GAUDENS PAGE  3 

RODMAN  GILDER 5 

PETER  COOPER  . 9 

BASTIEN/LEPAGE 13 

GEORGE  W.  MAYNARD 15 

THE  CHILDREN  OF  JACOB  H.  SCHIFF 19 

THE  FAMILY  OF  RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER    .     .  21 

ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 25 

FRANCIS  D.  MILLET 27 

THE  ADAMS  MONUMENT 31 

DEACON  CHAPIN 35 

C.  C.  BEAMAN 37 

MRS.  SCHUYLER  VAN  RENSSELAER 41 

MISS  VIOLET  SARGENT 43 

ADMIRAL  FARRAGUT 47 

WILLIAM  M.  EVARTS 49 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 53 

ROBERT  GOULD  SHAW 57 

GENERAL  SHERMAN 61 

THE  COLUMBUS  MEDAL 65 

DR.  JAMES  McCOSH      . 69 

JOHN  HAY 75 

CARYATID 83 


AVGVSTVS   SAINT  GAVDENS 


HEN  modern  sculpture  was  betrayed 
by  its  leading  figures,  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  through  their  ex- 
cessive devotion  to  the  antique,  a  tra^ 
dition  was  established  which  for  a  long  time  seemed 
beyond  all  chance  of  death  or  change.  Canova  and 
Thorwaldsen,  in  Rome,  erected  classical  precedent  into 
a  fetish.  In  France,  which  was  later  to  be  the  scene  of  a 
plastic  renaissance,  anything  that  savored  of  personal 
idiosyncrasy  or  of  romantic  feeling  was  anathema  to 
the  Emperor  and  to  Louis  David,  his  court  painter, 
who  possessed  authority  in  the  direction  of  public  taste 
in  every  field.  American  sculptors,  proceeding  to  Italy 
for  inspiration,  were  confronted  by  a  kind  of  unwritten 
law  which  left  inspiration,  in  the  strict  sense,  outside  the 
pale  of  respectable  things.  In  the  studios  all  over  Europe 
masters  and  pupils  were  united  on  the  principle  that  to 
be  great  it  was  absolutely  necessary  to  be  "  grand,"  and 
for  the  true  measure  of  the  grand  style  they  looked  only 
to  Greece.  Surveying  the  earlier  history  of  our  own 
school,  one  is  appalled  by  the  damage  suffered  through 
this  sheep'like  adoption  of  a  classic  ideal,  passionately 


worshipped  but  only  half  understood.  It  fell  like  a  blight 
upon  those  well-meaning  workmen,  and  though  many 
of  them  lingered  long  upon  the  scene,  their  art,  years 
ago,  was  dead  as  nail  in  door.  Greenough,  Hiram 
Powers,  Thomas  Crawford,  William  Henry  Rinehart, 
and  the  rest  —  as  I  recall  the  names  I  recall  the  lines : 

«  As  dust  that  drives,  as  straws  that  blow, 
Into  the  night  go  one  and  all." 

It  is  just  because  these  men,  members  of  a  group  once 
powerful  and  famous,  have  since  been  so  thoroughly  dis- 
credited as  artists,  that  it  is  interesting  to  revert  to  them 
in  approaching  the  work  of  Saint-Gaudens.  He  was,  by 
virtue  of  actual  accomplishment,  what  even  the  best  of 
his  predecessors  was  only  through  the  accident  of  chro- 
nology — a  pioneer  of  American  sculpture.  The  develop- 
ment of  the  art  with  us  may  fairly  be  said  to  date  from 
his  appearance.  He  was  not  only  our  greatest  sculptor, 
but  the  first  to  break  with  the  old  epoch  of  insipid  ideas 
and  hidebound  academic  notions  of  style,  giving  the  art 
a  new  lease  of  life  and  fixing  a  new  standard.  All  can 
raise  the  flower  now,  for  all  have  got  the  seed.  There  are 
contemporaries  of  Saint'Gaudens  who  deserve  honor, 
hardly  less  than  he  deserves  it,  for  having  breathed  vital- 
ity into  American  sculpture.  There  was,  for  example, 
2 


HOMER  SAINT/GAUDENS 

This  portrait  of  the  sculptor's  son  was  one  of  the  earliest 
medallions  he  produced 


RODMAN  GILDER 

Modelled  in  Paris  at  nearly  the  same  rime  as  the  portrait  of 
Homer  SainfGaudens. 


the  late  Olin  Warner,  who  was  born  four  years  before 
Saint'Gaudens,  and  who  exercised  always  an  elevating 
influence.  But  Warner  would  probably  have  uttered 
with  eagerness  the  tribute  which  the  living  sculptors  in 
this  country  yield  to  Saint^Gaudens,  testifying  to  the 
initiative  he  took,  to  the  constructive  part  he  played,  in 
the  formation  of  our  school. 

He  entered  the  field  with  the  mixed  racial  equipment 
characteristic  of  so  many  distinguished  Americans.  His 
mother  was  an  Irishwoman;  his  father  was  born  in 
France.  Saint'Gaudens  himself, born  in  Dublin,  in  1 848, 
was  brought  to  this  country  in  his  earliest  childhood; 
and  though  he  spent  more  than  one  period  abroad,  he 
remained  as  distinctly  American  in  his  art  as  though  he 
had  come  from  a  long  line  of  native  ancestors.  With  a 
difference.  He  did  not  take  up  sculpture  where  Green' 
ough  and  the  others  had  left  it,  working  on  their  foun^ 
dation  and  transmogrifying  their  tradition.  He  showed 
his  Americanism  in  striking  out  in  a  totally  new  vein 
and  making  his  own  tradition.  Half  Irish,  half  French, 
and  wholly  sympathetic  to  his  environment,  he  was 
committed  to  American  tendencies,  not  as  an  heir,  with 
much  to  unlearn,  but  simply  in  so  far  as  his  genius  in' 
dined  him  to  assimilate  them.  No  American  artist  has 
shown  a  greater  freedom  than  he  from  what  are  gener^ 

7 


ally  called  "early  influences,"  and  are  specifically  de^ 
scribed  as  "Soand'So's  manner/'  He  was  thirteen  when 
he  was  apprenticed  to  a  cameo  cutter,  and  he  spent  sev^ 
eral  years  at  this  craft;  but  I  have  never  perceived  in  his 
sculpture  anything  to  remind  one  of  these  beginnings. 
At  night  he  studied  art.  Cooper  Union  and  the  Academy 

of  Design  were  both  useful  to  him  at  this  period.  Then, 

/ 

in  his  nineteenth  year,  he  went  to  Paris,  and  at  the  Ecole 
des  Beaux'Arts  profited  by  the  teaching  of  JoufFroy  until 
the  FrancO'Prussian  war  broke  out  and  he  entered  upon 
a  three  years'  residence  in  Rome.  In  all  that  formative 
period  he  appears  to  have  worked  patiently  toward  the 
expression  of  a  temperament  which  outside  influences 
could  stimulate  but  could  not  mould  to  their  own  like' 
ness.  He  was  perhaps  fortunate  in  studying  under  Jouf" 
froy,  a  safe  master,  who,  for  all  his  classicism,  was  never- 
theless near  enough  to  such  men  as  Rude  to  have  seen, 
and  turned  away  from,  the  quicksands  of  commonplace 
in  which  the  conventional  classicist  is  sooner  or  later 
lost.  He  was  enough  of  an  individualist  in  his  art  to  keep 
Saint'Gaudens  from  falling  into  routine,  and  enough  of 
an  academician  to  nourish  in  his  pupil  the  sense  of  mea^ 
sure  which  might  have  slumbered  if  he  had  fallen  into 
the  hands  of  a  more  naturalistic  teacher.  He  set  him  on 
the  right  path,  helped  him  to  develop  his  technique  along 
8 


PETER  COOPER 

Modelled  in  New  York  and  erected  beneath  the  shadow  of 
Cooper  Union  in  1897.  In  his  boyhood  the  sculptor  studied 
in  the  institution  founded  by  the  celebrated  philanthropist. 


•   ERECIED-BY-THE    * 
CITIZEN  SOPHEWYDRK-IK 
CRATEFVLRBftE 


good  lines,  and  did  not  for  a  moment  attempt  to  repress 
or  warp  his  ideas.  In  Rome  the  frigid  influences  predonv 
mating  did  the  young  sculptor  no  harm.  The  classical 
tradition  fertilized  his  taste,  but  it  did  not  lure  him  into 
imitation  of  classical  forms.  The  style  which  Saint' 
Gaudens  brought  back  with  him  on  his  return  to  this 
country  was  remarkable  for  its  blending  of  polish  with 
freedom.  Here  was  an  American  who  could  remain  long 
in  contact  with  the  forces  of  European  art  and  only  take 
from  them  that  which  suited  him. 

The  special  note  of  the  medallions  which  are  conspic' 
uous  among  his  first  productions  is  one  of  delicacy,  and 
in  the  character  of  that  delicacy  lies  a  source  of  strength 
which  was  from  first  to  last  of  immense  service  to  Saint' 
Gaudens.  It  is  a  delicacy  that  leaves  the  door  open,  so  to 
say,  for  the  raciest  realistic  impression.  The  medallions 
of  the  modern  French  school  are  apt  to  be  over-polished. 
Even  so  brilliant  a  master  as  Chaplain  could  not  quite 
divest  himself  of  the  notion  that  a  small  work  in  low  re- 
lief  must  necessarily  have  something  of  the  character  of 
a  minted  coin,  with  no  single  detail  stated  at  less  than 
its  highest  value.  He  and  other  Frenchmen  strangely 
misread  the  lesson  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  which  is 
that  the  complicated  web  of  super-subtle  light  and  shade, 
legitimate  in  a  large  Madonna  by  Mino,  say,  is  better  ex- 


1 1 


changed,  in  a  medallion,  for  the  strong  simplicity  of  those 
medals  in  which  Pisano  and  his  followers  proved  that  art 
on  a  small  scale  need  not  be  minute  in  feeling.  There  is 
a  medallion  of  Bastien-Lepage  by  Saint'Gaudens,  made 
just  after  the  brilliant  young  Frenchman  had  finished  his 
"Joan  of  Arc,"  in  which  the  sculptor  ranks  himself  with 
the  older  workers  in  this  province. 

The  touch  is  at  once  caressing  and  bold ;  nothing  es^ 
sential  is  slurred,  but  neither  is  anything  unduly  empha^ 
sized.  In  this,  and  in  certain  medallions  of  other  artists 
who  were  comrades  of  his  in  Paris,  Frank  Millet,  Mait- 
land  Armstrong,  and  George  W.  Maynard,  the  sculptor 
makes  us  feel  that  in  the  manipulation  of  surface  he  can 
be  as  subtle  as  anybody,  but  has  no  intention  of  sacrifi' 
cing  vitality  to  the  nuance.  On  the  contrary,  he  delights 
in  giving  a  clear,  even  forcible,  impression  of  the  person- 
ality  before  him.  It  is  portraiture  for  the  sake  of  truth  and 
beauty,  not  for  the  sake  of  technique.  He  was  faithful  to 
the  same  principle  in  other  works  of  a  similar  character 
which  he  executed  in  later  years,  steadily  gaining  in 
strength,  but  never  losing  the  spontaneity  which  be- 
longs to  his  earliest  essays.  His  work  in  the  round  is,  in 
a  sense,  more  important;  but  his  medallions  alone  would 
serve  to  make  him  known  as  a  great  artist.  In  them,  and 
in  his  upright  or  oblong  panels  in  low  relief,  he  allowed 
12 


BASTIEN/LEPAGE 

Modelled  in  Paris  about  1879.  It  was  done  immediately  after 
Bastien'  Lepage  had  finished  painting  his  "Joan  of  Arc."  He 
made,  in  exchange,  a  sketch  of  Saint'Gaudens. 


GEORGE  W.  MAYNARD 

Modelled  in  the  sculptor's  early  days  in  Paris,  when  he  made 
the  similar  portraits  of  Francis  D.  Millet,  D.  Maitland  Arm/ 
strong,  and  other  fellow  artists. 


I 


himself,  reasonably  enough,  a  certain  decorative  effect. 
Nothing  could  be  happier  in  arrangement  than  "The 
Children  of  Jacob  H.  Schiff,"  with  the  shaggy  hound 
indicated  behind  the  two  children,  and  the  garlands 
suspended  above  them  from  the  capitals  of  the  pilasters 
which  enclose  the  group.  Again,  in  "The  Children  of 
Prescott  Hall  Butler,"  the  composition  and  treatment 
of  the  quaint  costumes  have  a  piquancy  which  only  the 
artist  seeing  his  work  as  an  organic  thing,  and  bent  on 
making  it  something  new  and  picturesque,  could  achieve. 
In  a  marble  relief  of  Mrs.  Stanford  White,  both  the  con^ 
ception  and  the  execution  have  the  dainty  realism  and 
the  exquisiteness  which  we  associate  with  the  finest 
souvenirs  of  Tuscan  sculptors.  Masterly  craftsmanship 
marks  these  reliefs,  but  their  atmosphere  remains  one  of 
engaging  naturalness.  The  exception  to  the  rule  is  pro' 
vided  by  the  "  Miss  Violet  Sargent,"  in  which  the  figure, 
in  a  modern  dress,  seated  upon  a  carved  bench,  is  repre- 
sented playing  a  guitar.  The  effect  is  awkward,  even 
ugly,  but  fortunately  it  illustrates  the  sculptor's  sole  de^ 
parture  from  the  ideal  of  subtle  grace  and  suavity  of  line 
which  was,  on  the  whole,  part  and  parcel  of  his  artistic 
nature.  The  "  Miss  Violet  Sargent "  is  a  case  of  modern^ 
ity  not  quite  successfully  hit  off. 

In  dealing  with  the  late  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  on 

'7 


the  other  hand,  Saint'Gaudens  managed  to  be  modern 
without  crossing  the  line  that  separates  art  from  photo^ 
graphy.  The  Stevenson  is  known  in  two  versions.  The 
first  of  these,  the  circular  one,  dates  from  1887,  when 
the  romancer  was  ill  in  New  York.  Saint' Gaudens 
modelled  the  head  and  shoulders  in  five  sittings  of  two 
hours  each,  just  before  Stevenson  went  to  the  Adiron^ 
dacks.  He  did  the  hands  from  drawings  which  he  made 
at  Manasquan,  and  from  casts  executed  at  the  same  time, 
on  the  eve  of  Stevenson's  departure  for  Samoa.  The  long 
relief  for  the  memorial  in  St.  Giles's  Church  in  Edin^ 
burgh  was  modelled  in  Paris  in  1 900  from  the  medallion 
aforesaid,  and,  by  the  way,  the  history  of  this  work  of" 
fers  an  apt  example  of  the  difficulty  which  Saint'Gaudens 
sometimes  found  in  pleasing  himself,  and  the  ardor  with 
which  he  rehandled  a  thing  until  he  made  it  right.  I 
found  him  laboring  over  it  in  his  Paris  studio  and  con^ 
siderably  worried  by  it.  The  relief  was  cast,  but  on  its 
arrival  here  the  sculptor's  dissatisfaction  revived  and  he 
remodelled  it,  making  some  simplifications.  To  return 
to  the  question  of  modernity,  it  may  be  noted  that,  in 
both  these  portraits,  Stevenson  is  shown  as  a  sick  man 
reclining.  There  has  been  some  criticism  of  the  pose,  and 
objections  have  been  raised  to  the  cigarette  between  Ste^ 
venson's  fingers.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  details  in  ques^ 
18 


THE  CHILDREN  OF  JACOB  H.  SCHIFF 

Modelled  in  New  York  in  1888. 


THE  FAMILY  OF  RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER 

Modelled  in  Paris  in  the  intervals  of  work  upon  the 
Farragut  monument 


tion  are,  in  the  first  place,  necessary  to  the  characteristic 
impression  sought;  and,  furthermore,  they  have  been 
treated  with  such  discretion  that  not  one  of  them  en- 
dangers  the  balance  of  the  design.  On  the  contrary,  these 
are  two  of  the  best  things  Saint-Gaudens  ever  did,  real- 
istic in  essence,  but  in  each  case  with  the  figure  so  well 
placed,  and  modelled  with  so  much  delicacy  and  beauty 
of  style,  that  the  result  is  thoroughly  sculpturesque.  Cer- 
tainly, no  more  beautiful  memorial  to  Stevenson  could 
have  been  devised  than  the  one  which  Edinburgh  owes 
to  this  American  artist. 

Talking  one  day  in  Paris  with  the  late  Paul  Leroi,  I 
spoke  of  the  meretricious  elements  which  have  crept  into 
the  art  of  certain  men,  notably  one  celebrated  sculptor  at 
present  more  or  less  devoted  to  the  goddess  of  reclame.  I 
brought  up,  for  contrast,  the  work  of  Saint-Gaudens,  and 
my  companion  fastened  upon  the  name.  "  Ah,  there  is 
a  man ! "  he  exclaimed.  "  Do  you  remember  his  medal- 
lion of  Bastien-Lepage  ?  "  Every  one  remembers  it  who 
has  given  any  thought  at  all  to  the  sculpture  of  the  last 
thirty  years ;  every  one  has  p  uised  it ;  but  I  found  a  spe- 
cial interest  in  what  recollection  of  the  portrait  led  my 
French  friend  to  say.  The  opinions  of  a  foreigner  have 
a  value  of  their  own,  and  in  this  case  they  gathered 
weight  from  the  fact  that  the  speaker  had  been  studying 

23 


European  art  for  half  a  century.  What  chiefly  struck 
him  about  Saint'Gaudens's  work  was  its  beautiful  in^ 
tegrity.  "  It  is  work  well  done,"  he  said.  "  It  is  true ;  it  is 
sincere ;  it  has  never  been  degraded  by  the  tricks  of 
thoughtless  cleverness ;  he  has  never  made  any  sacrifices 
to  reclame."  There  you  have  one  of  the  reasons  why 
Saint'Gaudens  stands  in  the  front  rank  of  the  creative 
artists  of  his  period.  There  is  a  genuineness  about  all 
that  he  did  which  made  him  a  tower  of  strength  to 
American  art. 

In  discussing  his  medallions  and  works  in  low  relief, 
I  have  ignored,  in  a  measure,  the  chronology  of  his 
career.  But  even  if  dates  were  not  a  matter  of  small  mo' 
ment  in  the  art  of  a  man  who  would  keep  a  statue  in 
his  studio  for  years  if  he  were  not  content  with  its  first 
state,  I  would  wish  to  turn  now  to  a  question  bearing 
upon  his  whole  record.  This  is  the  question  of  what  sub' 
ject,  aside  from  portraiture,  meant  to  him.  The  only 
nude  figure  in  the  list  of  his  works  is  the  Diana  sur^ 
mounting  the  tower  of  the  Madison  Square  Garden  in 
New  York.  As  first  modelled  and  placed  in  position  this 
was  eighteen  feet  high;  but  Saint'Gaudens  and  Stanford 
White  took  it  down  at  their  own  expense  and  replaced 
it  by  the  present  version,  which  is  five  feet  shorter.  The 
incident  emphasizes  the  point  that  this  was  not  projected 
24 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

Stevenson  was  staying  for  a  short  time  at  a  New  York  hotel 
on  his  way  to  the  Adirondacks  in  1887.  He  gave  Saint/ 
Gaudens  five  sittings  of  two  hours  each  for  the  head  and 
shoulders  of  this  medallion.  In  modelling  the  hands  the 
sculptor  used  drawings  and  casts  made  at  Manasquan  just 
prior  to  the  romancer's  departure  for  Samoa. 


FRANCIS  D.  MILLET 

Modelled,  like  the  portrait  of  George  W.  Maynard,  during 
the  sculptor's  early  days  in  Paris. 


as  a  piece  of  statuary  pure  and  simple,  but  as  a  decorative 
finial,  to  be  seen  from  a  distance,  at  which  the  pose  and 
the  outline  would  alone  be  significant.  Considered  in 
this  light,  it  is  a  captivating  performance,  graceful,  pK> 
turesque,  and  a  good  illustration  of  what  ensues  to  the 
public  advantage  when  an  artist  improves  an  opportU' 
nity  of  the  sort  usually  left  to  a  mechanic.  But  it  is  not 
by  work  in  this  vein  that  Saint'Gaudens  is  known.  For 
evidence  of  his  imaginative  power  as  applied  to  themes 
apart  from  the  movement  of  con  temporary  life,  we  must 
look  to  his  draped  figures. 

Among  these  there  stand  some  works  of  extraordi' 
nary  nobility.  They  are  variations  on  a  type  which  he 
created  more  than  twenty  years  ago.  He  showed  then 
that  he  could  carve  an  angel  which  would  be  neither 
fantastic  nor  sentimental,  but  simply  an  image  of  spn> 
ituality.  Fate  was  unkind.  The  three  figures  for  the 
Morgan  tomb  at  Hartford  were  destroyed  by  fire.  But 
even  in  the  photograph  of  one  of  them  which  lies  before 
me  as  I  write,  the  loveliness  of  the  sculptor's  ideal  of 
feminine  form  is  obvious.  The  angel  stands  with  hands 
outstretched,  holding  a  scroll  from  which  she  sings.  An 
expression  of  peaceful  happiness  irradiates  the  pure  fea^ 
tures.  The  loose^flowing  robe,  confined  at  the  waist  with 
a  girdle  of  leafage,  is  marked  by  many  rippling  folds.  It 

29 


is  a  beautiful  figure,  the  attitude  is  perfect,  and,  above  all, 
this  angel  expresses  an  imaginative  idea.  The  same  idea 
recurs,  somewhat  modified,  in  the  caryatides  executed 
for  the  house  of  Cornelius  Vanderbilt,in  the  Smith  tomb 
at  Newport,  and  in  the  similar  relief  which,  with  a  group 
of  medallions,  represents  Saint-Gaudens  in  the  Luxenv 
bourg.  It  is  an  idea  of  delicate  form,  interpenetrated  with 
an  emotion  peculiarly  sweet,  spiritual,  and  reposeful.  The 
key  is  tenderly  poetic,  elegiac.  Romantic  as  it  is,  it  still 
does  not  exhaust  his  scope.  There  is  another  work  de- 
monstrating  that  Saint-Gaudens  could,  when  he  chose, 
rise  to  a  tragic  plane.  This,  the  Adams  monument  at 
Washington,  is,  for  a  kind  of  restrained  grandeur,  not 
only  the  finest  thing  of  its  kind  ever  produced  by  an 
American  sculptor,  but  an  achievement  which  modern 
Europe  has  not  surpassed. 

The  single  figure  in  this  monument  sits  enveloped  in 
heavy  drapery  on  a  rough-hewn  block  of  granite,  against 
a  wall  of  the  same  material.  Her  face  is  visible ;  the  right 
hand  is  raised  to  support  the  chin,  and  one  sees  the  bare 
arm  to  the  elbow ;  but,  for  the  rest,  the  form  is  muffled 
as  in  unearthly  garments.  It  is  a  mysterious,  sphinx-like 
presence,  strange  and  massive,  with  something  of  terror, 
but  more  of  solemn  dignity  and  beauty,  in  its  broad  sim- 
ple lines.  Her  riddle  is  past  finding  out.  All  that  we 
3° 


THE  ADAMS  MONUMENT 

This  bronze  upon  the  grave  of  Mrs.  Henry  Adams,  in  Rock 
Creek  Cemetery,  Washington,  belongs  to  the  middle  period 
of  the  sculptor's  career.  It  was  erected  in  1887.  Various  sym> 
bolical  names  have  been  given  to  it,  but  without  the  author/ 
ity  of  SainfGaudens,  who  never  invented  any  title  for  it. 


know  is  that  it  is  such  conceptions  as  this  that "  light  the 
way  of  kings  to  dusty  death/'  I  have  seen  it  more  than 
once,  under  different  conditions.  It  is  impressive  in  sun^ 
shine,  confronting  happy  nature  with  its  sombre  secret. 
But  on  a  bleak  winter's  day  or  in  rain,  its  mournful  charm 
is  heightened;  and  here,  one  reflects,  far  beyond  the  mea^ 
sure  of  any  other  of  his  compositions,  Saint^Gaudens  is 
the  poet,  the  dramatist,  intermingling  with  the  concrete 
qualities  of  plastic  art  the  more  elusive  qualities  of  mind 
and  soul.  I  have  thought,  standing  before  this  great  work, 
of  certain  masters  in  French  sculpture.  I  have  recalled 
Dubois,  in  one  of  his  figures  for  the  tomb  of  General 
Lamoriciere ;  Rodin,  in  divers  of  his  hierophantic  impro^ 
visations,  and  several  remarkable  statues  by  colleagues 
of  theirs,  men  on  a  lower  plane,  but  still  eminent.  None 
of  these  foreigners  has,  in  my  opinion,  ever  modelled 
a  statue  at  once  so  simple  and  so  full  of  meaning  as  this 
one  at  Washington.  Where  Dubois  would  have  made 
it  dignified,  noble,  but  academic  to  the  point  of  cold' 
ness,  Saint-Gaudens  has  clothed  it  with  an  air  charged 
with  the  thrilling  implications  of  the  grave.  Where 
Rodin  would  have  made  it  speak  of  movement,  would 
have  made  it  rugged  and  almost  luridly  epical,  Saint' 
Gaudens  has  made  the  figure  symbolical  of  rest  itself, 
and  has  been  tragic  through  intensity,  not  through  env 

33 


phasis  or  gesture.  I  remember  how  many  fine  French 
statues  have  been  spoiled  by  the  hint  of  the  theatre  intro^ 
duced,  by  some  exaggeration  in  the  expression  of  the  face 
or  by  arbitrary  arrangement  of  the  limbs ;  and  I  rejoice 
anew  in  the  determination  with  which  Saint^Gaudens 
turned  his  back  upon  all  meretricious  expedients  and 
gave  to  this  statue  the  bare  majesty  of  a  passage  from 
Homer.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  landmark  in 
American  sculpture,  on  its  imaginative  side,  was  mod' 
elled  by  an  artist  who  never  wreaked  himself  to  any 
extent  on  allegorical  and  symbolical  composition.  The 
several  angelic  figures  he  produced  are,  when  all  is  said, 
merely  angelic.  Their  physiognomies  are  furrowed  by 
no  lines  of  complex  thought.  But  the  seated  divinity  in 
the  cemetery  Sit  Washington  touches  the  mind  at  many 
points,  and  is  remembered  with  a  sense  of  profundity 
and  supernatural  wonder. 

It  is  Saint'Gaudens's  one  memorable  effort  in  the 
sphere  of  the  loftiest  abstraction.  His  other  greatest  tri' 
umphs  were  won  in  the  field  of  portraiture,  working  in 
the  round  and  on  the  scale  of  a  public  monument.  Twice 
his  subject  met  him  halfway  in  respect  to  picturesque^ 
ness:  when  he  made  the  Chapin  monument  at  Spring' 
field,  known  as  "The  Puritan,"  and  when,  with  the 
assistance  of  Miss  Lawrence,  he  erected  a  statue  of 
34 


DEACON  CHAPIN 

Modelled  in  New  York  in  the  late  eighties.  It  is  not  in> 
tended  as  a  portrait,  but  as  an  ideal  embodiment  of  the  traits 
of  "  The  Puritan,"  the  tide  by  which  it  is  generally  known. 
It  stands  in  Springfield,  Mass. 


CO!  i  •  S 

'»  rf -THE-FOVHDER  vOF 


C  C.  BEAMAN 

Modelled  in  the  early  eighties. 


Columbus  in  front  of  the  Administration  Building  at 
the  Chicago  Fair.  The  Columbus,  I  suppose,  having  been 
put  up  in  staff  for  a  temporary  purpose,  has  ere  this  dis^ 
appeared.  One  is  easily  reconciled  to  the  loss.  It  was  a 
striking  but  not  permanently  impressive  piece  of  work. 
The  tall  commander,  standing  in  cloak  and  armor,  with 
sword  uplifted  in  one  hand  and  a  voluminous  standard 
supported  in  the  other,  though  undeniably  effective, 
somehow  lacked  the  quality  of  style.  "  The  Puritan," 
however,  endures  to  illustrate  Saint'Gaudens's  aptitude 
in  the  interpretation  of  a  bygone  personality  and  in  the 
treatment  of  unconventional  costume ;  and  it  is  a  briL 
liant  statue.  The  stalwart  old  New^Englander  advances 
toward  us  with  energetic  tread,  his  stout  staff  seeming 
to  ring  upon  the  ground,  and  the  clutch  of  his  fingers 
upon  the  Bible  under  his  arm  bespeaking  the  ardent 
and  dogmatic  religionist.  The  wide  brim  of  the  peaked 
hat  shades  the  face  of  a  man  of  iron  will.  The  long  and 
heavy  cloak,  that  falls  nearly  to  his  heels,  seems  a  coat 
of  mail  for  this  peaceable  warrior  in  an  age  of  simple 
living  and  strenuous  thinking  on  sublime  themes.  The 
statue  is  a  strong  piece  of  characterization.  It  is  also  an 
admirable  study  of  form,  boldly  modelled,  like  all  of 
Saint'Gaudens's  public  statues,  but  with  a  touch  in  it 
more  pictorial  than  he  elsewhere  cared  to  employ. 

39 


Elsewhere,  indeed,  he  practically  always  had  to  solve 
a  far  more  difficult  problem  than  he  faced  in  making 
"  The  Puritan/'  In  the  relief  of  Dr.  Bellows  for  the 
Church  of  All  Souls  in  New  York,  he  could  gain  an  inv 
posing  effect  through  the  flow  of  ecclesiastical  robes,  and 
he  had  some  little  help  of  a  similar  sort  in  the  McCosh 
Memorial  at  Princeton.  But  in  the  five  monuments  in 
which  he  commemorated  five  heroes  of  our  Civil  War, 
he  had  no  aid  from  costume  or  accessories.  He  had  in« 
stead  to  work  on  the  bed  rock  of  character,  and  he  did 
this  with  results  that  put  to  shame  the  artists  perpetually 
complaining  that  they  are  handicapped  by  the  nature 
of  modern  clothes.  The  Farragut,  in  Madison  Square, 
New  York,  was  the  first  public  statue  he  was  commiS' 
sioned  to  make.  He  modelled  it  in  Paris  in  i  880.  The 
Lincoln,  at  Chicago,  dates  from  the  middle  nineties,  and 
the  Logan,  likewise  at  Chicago,  belongs  to  the  same 
period.  Saint^Gaudens  began  work  on  the  Shaw  Me^ 
morial,  for  Boston,  in  i  8  84,  and  expected  to  complete  it 
in  a  couple  of  years,  but  it  was  not  unveiled  until  1897. 
General  Sherman  gave  him,  in  1887,  some  eighteen 
sittings  for  the  familiar  bust,  but  the  equestrian  statue 
erected  in  New  York  in  1903  was  begun  some  years 
later,  and  was  long  in  being  carried  to  completion.  No 

one  but  the  sculptor  himself  could  have  told  the  psycho^ 
40 


MRS.  SCHUYLER  VAN  RENSSELAER 
Modelled  in  New  York  in  1888. 


MISS  VIOLET  SARGENT 

A  portrait  of  the  sister  of  the  painter.  There  is  also  a  me/ 
dallion  of  the  latter  by  Saint/Gaudens. 


logical  history  of  these  undertakings;  no  one  else  could 
have  said  to  what  extent  each  one  of  them  was  isolated 
from  the  others  as  a  matter  of  study,  or  formed  part  of 
a  kind  of  sequence  in  his  mind.  But  I  do  not  think  one 
would  go  far  wrong  in  regarding  the  entire  group  as  the 
outcome  of  a  broad  sympathy  for  one  capital  fact  in  our 
history,  the  War,  with  all  that  it  means  to  a  lover  of 
his  country.  In  other  words,  just  as  we  think  of  RafFet 
as  the  pictorial  interpreter  of  the  Napoleonic  regime 
on  its  military  side,  we  cannot  but  recognize  in  Saint' 
Gaudens  the  representative,  in  plastic  art,  of  our  own 
tremendous  struggle.  Was  he  at  the  outset  conscious  of 
an  ambition  destined  to  flower  in  such  a  position  as  this? 
It  is  more  than  doubtful.  Yet  it  is  pleasant  to  think  of 
him  as  foreordained  to  carry  out  these  splendid  works, 
and  certainly  they  have,  whether  taken  separately  or  to" 
gether,  the  quality  convincing  us  that  no  one  else  could 
have  done  them  quite  so  well.  It  is  not  simply  that  each 
one  of  the  monuments  has  certain  specific  artistic  merits, 
lifting  it  to  a  high  plane.  It  is  rather  that  in  each  of  his 
studies  of  historical  subjects,  Saint-Gaudens  somehow 
struck  the  one  definitive  note,  made  his  Lincoln  or  his 
Sherman  a  type  which  the  generations  must  revere  and 
which  no  future  statues  can  invalidate.  Monuments 
to  leaders  in  the  great  conflict  are  already  excessively 

45 


numerous,  and  some  of  them  are  worthy ;  but  none,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  has  the  authority  to  which  Saint-Gaudens 
attained  in  all  of  his. 

Though  he  strengthened  his  art  as  the  years  passed, 
this  virtue  of  dramatic  truth  is  perceptible  as  clearly  in 
his  earliest  as  in  his  latest  work.  The  Farragut,  for  ex- 
ample,  undoubtedly  wants  the  grandeur  of  the  eques- 
trian  Sherman,  but  it  remains  the  best  of  all  our  trib- 
utes  to  the  dead  admiral.  I  have  heard  criticisms  of  the 
pose.  Ribald  remarks  have  been  made  about  what  has 
been  called  "the  Farragut  strut/*  It  is  not  a  strut  at  all, 
but  simply  the  natural  carriage  of  a  seaman.  Indeed,  the 
whole  spirit  of  this  monument  is  delightfully  significant 
of  the  quarter-deck,  a  fact  which  may  trouble  those  who 
fear  realism  in  art  as  they  fear  the  plague,  but  which 
carries  its  own  recommendation  to  those  conscious  of 
the  importance  of  realistic  principles  when  they  are  pro- 
perly  handled.  They  are  handled  with  excellent  judg- 
ment  in  the  Farragut.  To  call  it  breezy  would  be  to 
overstate  the  case,  but  it  is  true  that  Saint-Gaudens  pro- 
duced on  this  occasion  a  figure  instinct  with  the  energy  of 
a  man  fronting  perils  in  the  open  air,  amid  great  winds 
and  under  a  vast  sky.  It  owes  something,  by  the  way, 
to  the  pedestal,  which  is  at  once  charmingly  decorative 
and  quite  weighty  enough  to  provide  a  true  monu' 


ADMIRAL  FARRAGUT 

This  was  the  sculptor's  first  commission  for  a  statue.  He 
modelled  it  in  Paris,  exhibiting  it  in  the  Salon  there  in  1880. 
It  was  erected  in  New  York  in  the  following  year. 


WILLIAM  M.  EVARTS 

Modelled  in  New  York  immediately  after  the  sculptor's 
return  from  Italy.  Mr.  Evarts  was  one  of  his  first  patrons, 
and  this  was  the  first  portrait  bust  that  Saint'Gaudens  exe/ 
cuted. 


mental  base  for  the  bronze.  It  is  well  to  remember  the 
date  of  the  Farragut,  1880-81.  At  that  time  we  were 
still  more  or  less  held  in  thrall  by  the  facile  makers  of 
"soldiers'  monuments,"  those  dreary,  lifeless  produc- 
tions which  cheered  our  patriotism  and  ought  to  have 
shocked  our  taste.  Saint-Gaudens  pointed  a  way  to  a 
better  order  of  things.  To  do  this  was  to  do  much,  but 
the  sculptor  did  more  when  the  commission  for  the  Lin- 
coin  at  Chicago  was  given  to  him.  Under  the  pressure 
of  a  greater  inspiration  than  Farragut  supplied,  his  art 
leaped  forward,  rising  to  a  more  imposing  height. 

The  Lincoln  has  always  seemed  to  me  one  of  the 
salient  statues  of  the  world,  a  portrait  and  a  work  of  art 
of  truly  heroic  mould.  Simplicity  is  its  predominating 
characteristic.  Precisely  in  this  attitude  does  one  prefer 
to  see  Lincoln  portrayed,  with  no  hint  of  dramatic  move- 
ment, with  nothing  of  the  orator,  but  with  everything 
of  the  quiet,  self-contained  genius  that  was  the  same 
under  all  circumstances,  in  all  crises.  There  is  more  elo- 
quence in  the  grip  of  the  left  hand  on  the  edge  of  the 
coat  than  in  any  gesture  which  an  artist  of  melodramatic 
tendencies  might  possibly  have  invented.  Invention,  in- 
deed, has  no  place  here.  It  is  as  if  Saint-Gaudens  had 
divined  Lincoln's  very  soul  and  had  imaged  him  forth 
as  men  saw  him  under  the  stress  of  the  war,  and  as  he 


lives  in  the  imagination  of  millions  who  never  beheld 
him  in  the  flesh,  but  who  feel,  with  deepest  gratitude, 
as  though  they  had  known  him  all  their  lives.  Here, 
in  the  tall  and  intensely  human  figure,  American  to  the 
core,  with  its  magnificent  head  —  that  has,  to  my  mind, 
more  of  living  grandeur  than  belongs  to  the  marble  of 
any  antique  hero — we  have  the  Lincoln  of  Lowell's 

lines, — 

How  beautiful  to  see 

Once  more  a  shepherd  of  mankind  indeed, 

Who  loved  his  charge,  but  never  loved  to  lead ; 

One  whose  meek  flock  the  people  joyed  to  be, 
Not  lured  by  any  cheat  of  birth, 
But  by  his  clear'grained  human  worth, 

And  brave  old  wisdom  of  sincerity ! 

They  knew  that  outward  grace  is  dust ; 
They  could  not  choose  but  trust 

In  that  sure/footed  mind's  unfaltering  skill, 
And  supple'tempered  will 

That  bent  like  perfect  steel  to  spring  again  and  thrust. 
His  was  no  lonely  mountain/peak  of  mind, 
Thrusting  to  thin  air  o'er  our  cloudy  bars, 
A  sea-mark  now,  now  lost  in  vapors  blind ; 
Broad  prairie  rather,  genial,  leveMined, 
Fruitful  and  friendly  for  all  human  kind, 

Yet  also  nigh  to  heaven  and  loved  of  loftiest  stars. 
Nothing  of  Europe  here, 

52 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Modelled  in  New  York  in  the  eighties,  and  unveiled  in 
Chicago  in  1887.  The  pedestal  and  exedra  were  designed 
by  the  late  Stanford  White. 


Or,  then,  of  Europe  fronting  mornward  still, 

Ere  any  names  of  Serf  and  Peer 

Could  Nature's  equal  scheme  deface 

And  thwart  her  genial  will ; 

Here  was  a  type  of  the  true  elder  race, 
And  one  of  Plutarch's  men  talked  with  us  face  to  face. 

Lowell,  gathering  up  into  his  "Commemoration  Ode" 
the  traits  which  all  men  have  learned  to  see  in  Lincoln, 
gives  us  a  portrait  with  an  accent  of  its  own.  Saint' 
Gaudens  does  the  same  thing.  We  think  first  of  Lincoln 
when  seated  in  the  stately  exedra  with  which  Stanford 
White  partly  enclosed  the  statue,  but  one  of  the  mariy 
thoughts  with  which  we  leave  the  work  is  of  its  origix 
nality,  of  the  way  in  which  Saint'Gaudens  has  stamped 
his  own  individuality  upon  the  bronze.  I  come  back  to 
the  question  of  his  style,  its  polish  that  is  never  hard,  its 
freedom  that  never  passes  into  license.  In  the  treatment 
of  the  hopelessly  commonplace  costume  in  the  statue, 
all  depended  upon  an  avoidance  of  anything  like  self- 
assertion.  WTien  occasion  requires  it,  Saint-Gaudens 
can  beguile  us  with  every  touch  that  he  bestows  upon 
the  clay.  We  see  a  work  of  his  as  a  whole,  and  yet  linger 
with  pleasure  over  this  or  that  passage.  In  the  Lincoln 
the  modelling  is  so  broad,  it  is  so  sterling  an  example 
of  the  art  of  generalization,  that  no  single  detail  attracts 

55 


the  eye.  This  is  the  grand  style  as  the  classicists  of  our 
old  school  failed  to  understand  it,  to  their  lasting  cost. 
Saint'Gaudens  abandoned  it,  consciously  or  uncon^ 
sciously,  when  he  modelled  the  equestrian  statue  of 
General  Logan  for  Chicago,  and  was,  no  doubt,  justified 
in  so  doing.  He  had  a  valiant  warrior  to  portray,  and 
perhaps  it  was  fitting  to  represent  him  controlling  a 
fiery  animal  and  bearing  a  flag  aloft  with  the  air  of  a  con^ 
queror  in  the  face  of  the  enemy.  It  is  a  stirring  piece 
of  sculpture,  ebulliently  alive,  and,  like  the  Farragut,  a 
wonderfully  intimate  interpretation  of  a  moving  per^ 
sonality.  All  that  the  motive  demanded  is  adequately  ex' 
pressed.  The  smell  of  the  battlefield  has  to  go  into  a  good 
portrait  of  "Black  Jack"  Logan,  and  Saint'Gaudens, 
conscientious  artist  that  he  was,  paid  it  due  attention, 
But  somehow  he  does  not  seem  happy  in  this  work,  he 
is  not  wholly  himself.  The  flamboyant  lies  outside  the 
sphere  in  which  he  moved  with  greatest  ease  and  con^ 
tentment,  and  I  cite  the  Logan  both  for  its  confirmation, 
by  contrast,  of  the  broad  drift  of  his  art  and  for  its  per^ 
feet  illustration  of  what  the  French  critic  I  have  quoted 
called  the  "beautiful  integrity"  of  Saint^Gaudens's 
work.  If  the  Logan  does  not  impress  us  as  the  Lincoln 
does,  it  is  the  fault  of  the  subject,  not  of  the  sculptor;  he 
at  least  did  his  duty  by  it.  One  is  easily  lured  from  this, 
56 


ROBERT   GOULD  SHAW 

When  Saint'Gaudens  undertook  this  memorial  in  1884  he 
expected  to  complete  it  within  a  comparatively  short  time, 
but  he  became  absorbed  in  modifications  of  the  scheme,  and 
kept  it  by  him  for  a  number  of  years.  It  was  unveiled  in 
Boston  in  1897. 


however,  as  the  Lincoln  lures  us  from  the  Farragut,  to 
the  two  other  equestrian  monuments  which  complete 
the  group  of  Saint'Gaudens's  Civil  War  memorials,  the 
Shaw  and  the  Sherman.  The  first  of  these  suffers  from 
two  serious  drawbacks.  The  bronze  casting  of  the  Shaw 
is  far  from  satisfactory,  and  the  monument  is  unfor^ 
tunately  placed  in  front  of  the  State  House  in  Boston, 
at  a  point  which  prevents  the  spectator  from  seeing  it 
unobstructed  at  just  the  right  distance.  But  it  might  be 
still  further  handicapped  without  losing  its  effect,  which 
is  one  of  interfused  fire  and  pathos.  The  colored  troops 
marching  across  the  relief  to  the  beat  of  the  drum  con^ 
vey  the  needed  impression  of  martial  animation ;  and 
Shaw,  on  his  advancing  charger,  deepens  the  sense  of 
tense  excitement  which  it  is  one  of  the  sculptor's  aims  to 
communicate.  Simultaneously,  though,  with  our  appre^ 
hension  of  what  is  spectacular  and  thrilling  in  the  relief, 
comes  our  perception  of  the  sadness  in  Shaw's  face  and 
the  melancholy  beauty  of  the  figure  that  floats  above 
him.  The  scheme  is  daring.  Ever  since  Velasquez  pain  ted 
the  Surrender  of  Breda,  his  arrangement  of  the  long 
lances  in  that  glorious  canvas  has  been  emulated  by  one 
artist  after  another,  and  always  the  collocation  of  verti" 
cal  lines  has  driven  them  to  despair.  Saint^Gaudens  must 
have  struggled  sorely  before  he  marshalled  the  uplifted 

59 


muskets  and  flags  in  the  Shaw  in  an  array  neither  rest' 
less  nor  inert.  As  the  work  stands,  however,  there  is  no 
sign  of  struggle.  The  weapons  represented,  like  the  fig' 
ures,  fall  into  an  unbroken  harmony.  The  composition 
is  a  perfect  unit. 

This  is  one  explanation  of  the  grandeur  of  the  Sher^ 
man.  The  difficulty  of  the  problem  by  which  he  was 
confronted  when  he  undertook  it,  and  the  measure  of 
his  success  in  dealing  with  it,  are  the  better  understood 
if  one  pauses  to  consider  the  rarity  of  those  occasions  in 
history  upon  which  similar  problems  have  received  any' 
thing  like  adequate  solution.  Ancient  times  give  us  the 
steeds  of  the  Parthenon  and  the  famous  horses  of  St. 
Mark's ;  the  splendid  animal  which  the  bronze  figure  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  bestrides  in  the  Piazza  del  Campidoglio, 
at  Rome;  the  leaping  chariot  team  of  the  Vatican,  and 
other  fine  but  less  eminent  examples.  The  great  eques' 
trian  statues  of  the  modern  world  may  be  counted  with' 
out  exhausting  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  Verrocchio's 
Colleoni  at  Venice  heads  the  list,  with  Donatello's  Gat' 
tamelata  at  Padua.  Had  Leonardo's  model  for  the  mon' 
ument  of  Francesco  Sforza,  at  Milan,  not  been  destroyed 
by  vandals,  leaving  no  wrack  behind,  we  may  be  sure  that 
a  third  triumph  would  have  been  compassed.  But  of  the 
statues  that  survive  how  many  are  worthy  to  stand  be' 
60 


GENERAL  SHERMAN 

In  1887  Saint'Gaudens  made  the  well-known  bust  of  Sher/ 
man,  modelling  it  "with  great  care," as  he  said,  in  about 
eighteen  sittings  of  two  hours  each.  This  bust  supplied  the 
basis  for  the  portrait  in  the  equestrian  statue.  The  figures  of 
Sherman  and  the  horse  were  modelled  in  New  York,  as  was 
the  Victory  (the  latter  being  first  modelled  from  the  nude), 
and  then  the  work  was  taken  to  Paris  to  be  enlarged  to  its 
present  scale  and  cast  in  bronze.  The  monument  was  unveiled 
in  New  York  in  1 903. 


side  the  Venetian  and  Paduan  masterpieces  ?  Certainly 
not  the  Philip  IV  of  the  Florentine,  Tacca,  at  Madrid, 
spirited  though  it  is.  Nor  is  Falconet's  Peter  the  Great,  at 
St.  Petersburg,  the  perfect  work  that  that  accomplished 
Frenchman  sought  to  make  it.  Coming  down  to  more 
recent  generations,  the  Frederick  the  Great  of  Rauch,  at 
Berlin,  impresses  us  without  waking  the  least  enthusi' 
asm,  and  in  our  own  day  really  inspired  equestrian  stat' 
ues  are  harder  than  ever  to  find.  One  exists  in  Paris,  the 
Jeanne  d'Arc  of  Paul  Dubois,  but  it  is  the  sole  French 
masterpiece  of  its  kind.  The  general  level  of  the  Parisian 
school  is  that  of  Fremiet's  Jeanne  d'Arc,  in  the  Rue  de 
Rivoli,  brilliant  but  not  lofty.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to 
say  that  if  Saint'Gaudens's  Sherman  is  to  be  grouped 
with  any  of  these  statues  I  have  mentioned,  it  must  be 
with  those  of  the  Renaissance  masters. 

It  is  worthy  of  them  partly  because  of  its  unity  of 
composition,  the  horse,  its  rider  and  the  figure  of  Victory 
being  consummately  well  adjusted  one  to  the  other,  and 
all  three  to  a  single  effect  of  dramatic  grandeur ;  partly 
because  it  is  a  product  of  great  technical  skill;  partly  be^ 
cause  it  bears  the  stamp  of  style,  breathing  the  authority 
of  a  man  of  genius.  But  no  less  important  than  any  one 
of  these  elements — perhaps,  indeed,  the  most  import' 
ant  of  the  various  sources  of  the  artist's  success — is  his 

63 


power  of  interpreting  his  subject  at  just  that  moment  in 
which  its  vitality  passes  the  most  felicitously  into  the 
envelope  of  art.  In  the  representation  of  an  equestrian 
group,  sculpture,  since  the  Athenian  era,  has  always  os- 
ciliated  between  the  repose  that  spells  lifelessness  and  the 
movement  that  spells  violence.  Only  the  very  greatest 
artists  have  found  that  middle  ground  on  which  their 
horses,  whether  stock-still,  pacing,  or  prancing,  have  kept 
the  golden  mean,  signifying  neither  the  uncapturable 
freedom  of  nature  nor  the  immobility  of  art,  but  a  perfect 
blend  of  what  is  strictly  sculpturesque  in  both.  Saint' 
Gaudens  found  that  middle  ground.  His  horse  is  obvi- 
ously  advancing,  and  Sherman's  body,  tense  with  nerv- 
ous  energy,  is  at  one  with  the  body  beneath  him,  equally 
expressive  of  movement.  The  winged  Victory  in  every 
fibre  quivers  with  the  rhythm  of  oncoming  resistless 
force.  But  so  perfect  is  the  balance  of  this  group,  so  un- 
erring  has  the  sculptor  been  in  the  fusion  of  elasticity 
with  restraint,  that,  while  his  work  is  at  every  point  alive, 
it  has  the  calm  dignity  which  alone  befits  a  monumental 
work  of  art.  One  way  of  emphasizing  this  is  to  compare 
the  Sherman  with  some  such  familiar  composition  as 
the  Emperor  William  of  Begas  at  Berlin;  the  gulf  that 
separates  genius  from  mediocrity  is  then  vividly  realized. 
The  German  sculptor's  solution  of  his  problem  is 


THE  COLUMBUS  MEDAL     - 

Modelled  for  the  exhibition  held  at  Chicago  in  1893,  in 
commemoration  of  the  four  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
landing  of  Columbus.  Of  the  two  designs  made  by  Saint/ 
Gaudens,  the  second  was  adopted.  The  reverse  of  the  one 
abandoned  has  a  special  interest,  the  figure  illustrating,  as 
does  the  Diana  for  the  top  of  the  Madison  Square  tower  in 
New  York,  the  very  rare  introduction  of  the  nude  into  his 
work. 


fully  disappointing,  even  though  he  had  the  precious  aid 
provided  by  an  elaborate  architectural  scheme.  Not  all 
the  paraphernalia  of  the  vast  monument  on  the  Spree 
can  obscure  the  fact  that  the  central  group  is  made  up 
of  only  factitiously  related  parts,  that  no  harmony  of 
form  or  line,  of  mass  and  light  and  shade,  is  established 
amongst  the  varied  elements  of  the  design.  In  Saint' 
Gaudens's  work  the  rhythm  of  the  dramatic  conception 
is  held  so  well  in  hand,  it  is  so  majestic,  that  classic  art 
itself  could  not  produce  a  more  nobly  monumental  effect. 
Saint'Gaudens  had,  indeed,  this  much  in  common  with 
the  antique,  that  he  could  not  be  trivial  or  violent,  but  had 
to  see  life  and  treat  it  in  his  art  with  a  wide  and  steady 
vision,  a  strong  hand,  and  a  lofty  feeling.  Sincerity  is  writ 
large  upon  everything  he  did,  from  the  medallions  of  his 
earlier  days  to  the  Sherman,  which  was  the  fruit  of  his 
maturity. 

He  was  fortunate  in  his  opportunities,  which  enabled 
him  to  illustrate  American  history  in  statues  of  some 
of  its  most  representative  figures.  At  Springfield,  in  the 
Chapin  monument,  he  embodied  the  traits  of  our  Puri- 
tan forefathers.  At  Chicago  his  statue  of  Lincoln  touches 
the  highest  plane  in  the  commemoration  of  our  noblest 
type  of  statesmanship.  In  New  York  his  Farragut  is  an 
unique  souvenir  of  our  naval  history,  and  the  Sherman 


stands  with  an  even  greater  eloquence  for  the  other  arm 
of  the  service.  It  is  a  matter  for  deep  gratitude  that  the 
man  who  had  these  opportunities  used  them  in  such 
wise  as  to  strengthen  among  his  countrymen  both  pa^ 
triotism  and  the  love  of  beauty.  This  dual  significance 
of  his  work  is  particularly  to  be  noted.  Saint' Gaudens 
was  always  a  keen  craftsman,  always  solicitous  of  the 
decorative  note,  but  so,  likewise,  was  he  invariably  care^ 
ful  to  have  something  to  say,  to  make  his  art  interesting 
as  well  as  effective  in  pure  form.  "  Interesting "  is  env 
phatically  the  word,  denoting  a  virtue  which  embraces 
a  multitude  of  things  and  belongs  in  the  foreground,  es^ 
pecially  where  public  monuments  are  concerned.  We 
rightly  praise  an  artist  for  working  with  no  thought  of 
anything  save  the  task  in  hand ;  we  despise  him  if  he 
"  plays  to  the  gallery ."  Yet  it  is  transcendently  import" 
ant  that  the  portrait  in  bronze  or  marble  of  a  national 
hero  should  speak  in  unmistakable  terms  alike  to  the 
connoisseur  and  to  the  quite  uninstructed  man.  A  char^ 
acter  must  be  humanly  realized,  made  to  live  upon  its 
pedestal  so  that  the  heart  of  the  patriot  as  well  as  the 
mind  of  the  dilettante  may  be  touched.  There  is  no 
thought  here  of  making  a  vulgar  concession  to  the  mob ; 
there  is  thought  only  of  the  sympathy,  the  emotion,  by 
which  the  greatest  men  of  genius  in  all  ages  have  been 
68 


DR.  JAMES  McCOSH 

This  memorial  to  the  President  of  Princeton  was  erected 
there  in  1889. 


moved.  It  is  because  with  Saint-Gaudens  this  sympathy, 
this  emotion,  always  kept  pace  with  his  strictly  plastic 
faculty,  that  his  statues  lifted  themselves  far  above  the 
level  of  ordinary  sculpture  and  have  leavened  the  public 
taste  to  an  extent  difficult  to  compute  without  the  use 
of  terms  which  might,  at  first  blush,  seem  excessive. 

The  influence  of  Saint-Gaudens  is  only  partly  to  be 
indicated  by  reference  to  the  younger  men  who  served 
as  his  assistants  and  otherwise  received  instruction  in  his 
studio.  In  fact,  this  phase  of  the  question  need  scarcely 
detain  us,  for  his  way  with  a  disciple  was  to  encourage 
the  latter's  own  gifts ;  and  while  several  sculptors  of  tal- 
ent  might  be  cited  as  owing  him  much,  it  could  not  be 
said  that  he  founded  a  school.  No  followers  of  his  have 
caught  the  magic  of  his  style.  But  what  is  infinitely 
more  to  the  point,  the  whole  broad  movement  of  art 
in  this  country  is  the  better  for  his  having  touched  it ; 
appreciation  of  what  is  right  and  fine  is  the  wider  and 
deeper  because  he  did  so  much  to  accustom  men's  minds 
to  a  higher  standard.  We  like  to  believe  that  all  a  nation 
needs  for  the  creation  of  a  national  art  is  a  band  of  com- 
petent artists,  but  these  men  must  breathe  a  congenial 
atmosphere  and  their  work  must  be  wan  ted  by  their  con- 
temporaries. The  statues  made  by  Saint-Gaudens  have 
richly  contributed  to  the  awakening  and  the  fostering 


of  our  artistic  conscience.  They  have  shown  the  layman, 
long  put  off  with  imitation  sculpture,  what  the  real  thing 
is,  and  have  thereby  led  him  to  be  more  and  more  fastid" 
ious  in  his  demands.  The  appeal  of  the  public  monu' 
ment  is  direct  and  lasting.  You  cannot  live  in  the  same 
place  with  a  work  like  the  Lincoln  and  continue  to  be 
content  with  grossly  inferior  sculpture.  If,  by  chance, 
you  happen  to  have  a  voice  in  the  preparation  of  some 
memorial  in  bronze,  you^are  bound  to  give  your  vote 
for  something  that  at  least  approximates  to  the  master*- 
piece  you  have  learned  to  admire.  Nor,  in  this  matter, 
am  I  indulging  in  pleasant  theory.  Bad  sculpture,  vulgar 
sculpture,  no  doubt  persists  in  getting  itself  made  to  this 
day,  but  that  we  have  less  of  it  every  year  the  squares 
of  our  cities  abundantly  prove,  and  that  the  example  of 
SaintxGaudens  did  a  great  deal  to  bring  about  the  change 
is,  I  think,  equally  certain. 

Besides  educating  the  community  through  his  works, 
he  exercised  a  beneficent  influence  in  ways  not  generally 
known.  Many  more  commissions  than  he  could  find  the 
time  to  execute  were  offered  to  him  or  brought  to  his 
knowledge.  He  would  give  advice  as  to  their  treatment 
and  often  he  would  select  the  sculptor,  at  once  helping 
a  junior  to  make  his  way  in  the  world  and  satisfying 
the  need  of  the  patron  or  committee,  for  he  had  a  fine 
72 


sense  of  responsibility  and  never  would  place  a  task  in 
the  wrong  hands.  Few  realize  the  amount  of  time  and 
trouble  that  he  gave  to  interests  not  his  own,  but  im- 
portant  to  the  cause  of  art.  When  he  made  his  second 
journey  to  Europe, in  1 87  8, he  was  asked  to  serve  on  the 
jury  of  the  Universal  Exposition,  and  thenceforth,  all 
his  life  long,  he  was  constantly  assuming  similar  bur- 
dens. If  the  city  of  Washington  ever  develops  along 
the  magnificent  lines  laid  down  in  the  now  famous  re- 
port of  the  Park  Commission,  its  beauty  will  be  due  in 
part  to  the  share  which  Saint-Gaudens  had  in  the  fram- 
ing of  that  report.  He  was  of  a  nervous  temperament 
and  a  man  who  loved  the  retirement  of  his  own  studio, 
but  he  would  give  freely  of  his  energies  whenever  they 
seemed  to  be  needed  in  a  good  work.  His  generosity 
came  out,  too,  in  all  the  private  relations  of  an  artist. 
No  one  could  have  been  more  helpful  than  he  was 
to  young  men  of  talent.  I  remember  the  delight  and 
pride  a  sculptor  of  my  acquaintance  had  in  a  visit  Saint- 
Gaudens  once  paid  him.  My  friend  had  put  a  fine  piece 
of  work  to  his  credit.  Saint-Gaudens  did  not  know  him, 
but  when  he  saw  it  he  demanded  the  stranger's  address, 
jumped  into  a  cab,  and,  though  he  was»not  by  any  means 
in  good  health,  made  the  rather  long  journey  to  the 
young  man's  door.  "  I  am  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens/'  he  said, 

73 


when  it  was  opened,  "  and  I  Ve  come  down  to  tell  you 
what  I  think  of  the  beautiful  work  you  have  done/'  He 
stayed  long  enough  to  give  his  grateful  and  bewildered 
listener  such  happy  stimulus  as  he  had  never  known 
before.  It  was  the  more  encouraging,  too,  because  praise 
from  Saint'Gaudens  was  long  ago  recognized  as  having 
a  special  value  by  those  who  knew  him  or  knew  of  him 
—  it  was  always  as  wise  and  suggestive  as  it  was  kind. 
No  one  could  have  been  more  sympathetic  than  he 
was  in  the  discussion  of  work  by  other  men.  He  was  not 
a  voluminous  talker,  but,  like  every  creative  artist  of  the 
first  rank,  when  he  did  talk  he  spoke  to  the  point.  He 
would  remain  silent  sometimes  while  others  were  tear' 
ing  a  question  of  art  to  pieces.  When,  in  a  quiet  way,  he 
made  his  contribution  to  the  subject,  it  was  apt  to  carry 
more  weight,  to  be  more  illuminating,  than  anything  any 
one  else  had  said.  You  felt,  too,  the  play  of  a  singularly 
just  spirit  in  his  conversation.  Once,  in  a  long  talk  in  his 
New  Hampshire  studio,  we  got  round  to  certain  French 
painters,  to  Ingres,  a  man  of  genius,  and  to  others  like 
Delaroche,  Flandrin,  Scheffer,  Chasseriau,  whose  names 
are  scarcely  more  than  names  to  the  young  artist  of  to' 
day,  delivered  over  as  he  is,  body  and  soul,  to  the  mas" 
ters  and  methods  of  a  later  generation.  Saint'Gaudens 
went  to  the  heart  of  the  subject,  speaking  warmly  of 
74 


JOHN  HAY 


the  grave  spirit,  the  pure  style,  and  the  fine  mastery 
with  which  those  men  triumphed  over  what  the  modern 
eye  finds  "old  fashioned"  in  the  French  school  of  that 
epoch.  That  was  like  him,  like  his  liberal  and  loyal 
ture,  quick  to  seize  upon  essentials  in  art.  His  own 
ius  was  for  things  grave  and  pure  and  fine.  Also  it  was 
for  things  frankly  human  and  alive,  and  if,  as  I  have 
shown,  no  student  ever  emerged  from  the  discipline  of 
the  French  seventies  with  a  greater  freedom  from  aca^ 
demic  coldness,  with  a  keener  zest  for  the  realities  of  life 
and  art,  none  ever  kept  this  fervor  more  superbly  down  to 
the  end.  Discipline  helped,  it  did  not  enchain  him.  As  we 
talked  I  could  see,  stretched  across  the  wall  at  one  end  of 
the  studio,  an  immense  photograph  of  one  of  Raphael's 
faultlessly  constructed  decorations,  and  I  thought  of  how 
Saint'Gaudens  himself  strove  constantly  for  a  kindred 
perfection,  responded  to  the  abstract  appeal  that  is  Ra^ 
phael's,  yet  never  touched  the  clay  without  putting  upon 
it  the  impress  of  a  powerful  and  totally  free  personality. 
In  his  criticism,  as  in  his  work,  he  seemed  to  know  all 
the  laws,  but  to  be  simply  incapable  of  giving  them  pe^ 
dantic  application. 

There  was  another  way  in  which  Saint'Gaudens  re^ 
called  that  Renaissance  of  which  he  was  so  worthy.  I 
refer  to  his  unusual  productivity.  Sculpture  is  no  child's 

77 


play.  No  other  artistic  profession  entails  such  arduous 
and  even  back-breaking  labors.  The  mere  physical  de- 
tails that  go  to  the  making  of  a  statue  are  excessively 
burdensome.  "People  think  a  sculptor  has  an  easy  life 
in  a  studio,"  he  once  said  to  me,  with  a  rueful  smile,  as 
we  entered  his  workshop,  a  maze  of  clay  models,  plas- 
ter casts,  scaffolds,  and  ladders,  in  which  half  a  dozen 
assistants  were  busily  occupied.  "It's  hard  labor,  in  a 
factory,"  he  added.  He  worked  slowly,  too,  and  he  was 
easily  depressed.  I  recall  his  moodiness  over  the  criticism 
a  friend  had  made  when  pressed  to  give  an  opinion  on  a 
matter  of  proportion  in  a  statue  just  then  being  mod- 
elled. It  troubled  him  until  he  forgot  it  in  the  fun  of  re- 
membering that  we  are  apt  to  put  our  own  traits  into  a 
work  of  art,  or  look  for  them  there  unconsciously  if  some 
one  else  has  made  it.  "You  know,"  he  went  on,"  they  say 
an  artist  with  a  large  hand  always  gives  his  figures  large 
hands.  Perhaps  in  the  same  way  our  friend  was  looking 
for  his  own  proportions  in  my  statue."  So  with  a  laugh 
he  dismissed  the  teasing  thought,  yet  he  was  at  bottom 
an  artist  to  brood  long  over  the  details  of  his  work,  to 
change  and  change  and  change  again,  counting  no  ef- 
fort vain  if  it  helped  him  to  make  his  statue  perfect.  It 
was  my  privilege  to  look  on,  years  ago,  at  the  collabora- 
tion between  him  and  Stanford  White  in  the  designing 

78 


of  a  proper  base  for  the  Lincoln  at  Chicago.  The  spec^ 
tacle  was  a  lesson  in  devotion  to  an  ideal  of  thorough' 
ness.  This  ideal  was  in  his  blood  and  never  left  him.  In 
illness,  long  afterwards,  he  was  the  same  conscientious 
type,  the  same  exacting  critic  of  himself.  Did  he  wish  to 
clarify  his  thoughts  on  the  Parnell  he  was  doing  for 
Dublin,  or  the  new  Lincoln  he  had  long  had  in  hand, 
a  full-size  model  of  the  scheme  was  set  up  in  the  open 
air,  and  he  studied  it,  making  innumerable  and  costly 
modifications,  until  the  last  difficulty  had  been  con^ 
quered.  It  is  nothing  less  than  astonishing,  then,  that  he 
did  so  much. 

Let  us  resume  briefly  the  fruits  of  his  genius  and  un^ 
tiring  industry  in  a  career  lasting  a  scant  forty  years. 
He  began  his  series  of  great  public  monuments  with  the 
full'length  statues  of  Randall  and  Farragut.  He  made 
the  Sherman  and  the  Shaw,  the  Lincoln,  which  we  all 
know,  and  the  seated  statue  of  the  same  subject  which 
is  still  to  be  unveiled  at  Chicago.  Besides  those  studies 
in  picturesqueness,  the  equestrian  Logan  and  the  Chapin 
monument,  he  produced  the  simple  memorial  to  Gar' 
field  at  Philadelphia;  the  statue  of  Peter  Cooper,  which 
stands  so  soberly  realistic,  yet  with  such  poetic  justice, 
beneath  the  shadow  of  the  institution  in  which  Saint' 
Gaudens  studied  as  a  youth ;  and  the  intensely  modern 

79 


full  length  in  bronze  of  Marcus  Daly,  which  was  dedi' 
cated  at  Anaconda  in  Montana  only  a  short  time  ago. 
Then,  in  the  field  of  strictly  imaginative  work  he  cre^ 
ated  the  Adams  monument,  the  three  angels  lost  in  the 
fire  at  the  Morgan  tomb,  and  the  angel  of  the  Smith 
tomb  at  Newport.  In  decoration  he  modelled  the  two 
caryatides  in  the  house  of  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  and  the 
Diana  for  the  Madison  Square  tower.  There  are  busts 
by  him  of  General  Sherman,  Miss  Page,  Mr.  W.  A. 
Chanler,  and  the  late  John  Hay.  His  works  in  relief  in^ 
elude  the  four  memorials,  to  Stevenson,  Dr.  McCosh, 
Dr.  Bellows,  and  Mr.  Hollingsworth,  and  medallions 
portraying  Bastien^Lepage,  John  Sargent,  George  \V. 
Maynard,  Maitland  Armstrong,  Frank  Millet,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  Homer  Saint^Gaudens,  Mrs.  Stanford 
White,  Mrs.  Schuyler  Van  Rensselaer,  Mr.  Howells 
and  his  daughter,  the  family  of  Richard  Watson 
Gilder,  the  SchifF  children,  and  the  Butler  children.  Be^ 
sides  all  these  things,  and  divers  others,  he  left  a  quan^ 
tity  of  work  at  his  death  finished  save  for  translation 
into  marble  or  bronze,  and  these  posthumous  creations 
embrace  some  of  the  most  important  he  ever  put  forth. 
There  are  two  allegorical  groups,  each  presenting  three 
figures,  for  the  entrance  to  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
One  of  them  symbolizes  Labor,  Music,  and  Science; 
80 


the  other  Law,  Executive  Power,  and  Love.  He  left  also 
a  set  of  caryatides  for  the  facade  of  the  Albright  gallery 
at  Buffalo.  Four  monumental  portrait  statues  date  from 
the  closing  period  of  his  life :  the  Parnell  and  the  Lin^ 
coin,  to  which  I  have  already  referred ;  the  memorial  to 
Phillips  Brooks,  which  is  to  be  erected  in  front  of  Trinity 
Church  at  Boston,  and  the  bronze  of  Marcus  Hanna  for 
Cleveland.  Finally,  there  are  the  new  coins  designed  for 
the  United  States  Mint.  Is  this  not  an  heroic  mass  of 
work? 

It  was  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  trait  in  Saint'Gau' 
dens's  nature  that  he  himself  never  saw  anything  in  the 
least  heroic  about  his  life's  achievement.  His  greatness 
shone  forth  nowhere  with  a  steadier  light  than  in  his 
modesty.  It  is  to  the  honor  of  his  contemporaries  that 
he  was  always  appreciated  and  made  the  recipient  of 
many  tokens  of  public  regard.  Degrees  were  conferred 
upon  him  by  Harvard,  Yale,  and  Princeton.  At  Paris, 
in  1 900,  he  was  awarded  the  medal  of  honor,  and  at 
Buffalo  in  the  following  year  a  special  medal  was  be^ 
stowed  upon  him,  an  enthusiastic  tribute  from  his  fellow 
artists,  who  sought  lovingly  to  exalt  him  above  them- 
selves as  the  one  man  they  regarded  as  the  master  of 
them  all.  Yet  no  one  could  ever  have  divined  from 
Saint-Gaudens's  walk  and  demeanor  that  he  had  been 

81 


singled  out  in  this  fashion  by  his  countrymen.  Not  only 
at  work  in  his  studio  did  he  forget  the  world,  a  reverent 
student  of  his  art  down  to  the  end  of  his  days ;  every > 
where  he  was  modest  to  the  point  of  shyness,  carrying 
himself  with  a  peculiar  gentleness,  a  perfect  type  of  the 
high-minded  man  of  genius.  It  warmed  the  heart  to 
hear  him  speak  of  some  pupil  who  had  done  well.  It 
was  almost  as  though  the  pupil  had  surpassed  him,  and 
thereby  made  him  happier. 

With  his  largeness  of  mind  there  went  a  fine  sense 
of  humor,  which  seemed  to  serve  a  double  purpose,  giv- 
ing a  sharper  edge  to  his  ideas  and  manifesting  itself  in 
moods  of  inimitable  drollery.  He  had  a  kind  of  passion 
for  caricature  and  mimicry,  and  was  an  adept  in  both 
arts.  With  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen  he  could  make  the 
gravest  visage  comic.  When  he  began  with  voice,  face, 
and  hands  to  reproduce  an  episode  in  which  he  had 
found  amusement,  he  immediately  took  you  captive, 
and  before  the  swift  little  performance  was  over  you 
thought,  through  tears  of  laughter,  that  a  brilliant  actor 
had  been  lost  in  him.  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  saw  him 
describing  the  first  experiment  made  with  the  big  foun- 
tain in  Lincoln  Park  at  Chicago,  but  to  this  day  I  can  see 
the  vivid  picture  he  made,  and  smile  over  its  incompar- 
able fun.  The  water  was  to  be  turned  on,  and  a  number 
82 


CARYATID 

Modelled  in  New  York  in  the  early  eighties,  just  after  the 
unveiling  of  the  Farragut,  for  the  house  of  Cornelius  Van/ 
derbilt 


of  dignitaries  stood  in  tense  expectation  of  a  gorgeous  e£ 
feet.  The  signal  was  given,  the  mechanics  did  their  duty, 
and  then,  in  place  of  magnificent  gushing  streams,  there 
came  forth  a  few  feeble  trickles.  Saint'Gaudens  made 
the  whole  scene  live  before  his  auditors ;  they  waited 
breathless  and  excited  for  the  swelling  climax,  and  they 
were  dissolved  in  mirth,  as  he  was,  over  the  absurd  cok 
lapse  of  the  whole  thing.  To  hear  him  tell  a  story  was 
a  privilege  and  a  joy. 

To  know  him  on  his  graver  side,  to  realize  the  ten^ 
derness  and  the  patience  that  was  in  him,  was  to  be  even 
more  grateful  for  his  friendship.  He  had  not  an  atom  of 
sentimentality,  but  men  who  once  gained  his  affection 
held  it,  and  cherished  it  as  one  of  the  genuine  gifts  of 
life.  I  like  to  remember  him  in  association  with  the 
memory  of  the  late  Joseph  M.  Wells,  an  architect  of 
genius  who  was  one  of  his  closest  comrades.  For  some 
years  after  the  death  of  this  brilliant  man  and  so  long 
as  Saint'Gaudens  had  a  studio  in  New  York,  it  was 
there  that  the  survivors  of  his  circle  assembled  one  Sun^ 
day  afternoon  annually  to  listen  to  those  quartets  of 
Beethoven  that  Wells  had  prized  above  all  others.  Saint' 
Gaudens  was  not  given  to  the  facile  expression. of  his 
deeper  emotions,  but  in  some  subtle  way  he  was  the  pre^ 
siding  spirit  of  these  concerts ;  you  remembered  Wells 

85 


the  more  lovingly  through  his  friend's  remembrance  of 
him.  When  physical  trouble  fell  upon  Saint'Gaudens 
himself,  he  suffered  and  was  brave.  I  saw  him  in  Paris 
when  he  was  first  called  upon  to  bring  his  powers  of 
endurance  into  play.  We  travelled  to  London  together, 
and  though  the  journey  was  terribly  hard  upon  him,  he 
made  it  without  a  murmur,  and  was  far  less  concerned 
about  himself  than  fearful  of  distressing  others.  It  was 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  would  not  allow  illness  to 
keep  him  the  next  day  from  going  to  see  Sargent's  work 
at  the  Academy,  and  in  talk  then  he  ignored  his  own 
anxieties,  thinking  only  to  praise  the  painter.  There 
were  many  winning  sides  to  his  character,  he  had  many 
moods.  But  most  endearing  of  all  was  he  in  the  struggle 
he  made  against  sickness  and  pain.  In  that  he  revealed 
splendid  courage  and  cheerfulness,  bearing  his  burdens 
with  a  sweetness  that  those  who  knew  and  loved  him 
can  never  forget. 


CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  •    S  •  A 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


EC'P  IP  ' 

JAN  2  3 1998 
MAR  2  5  1998 


JAN  1 


0 000759331    2 


University  of  Califo 


Southern  Region 


